told Boehner that they still felt under-
represented, he gave them a second lead-
ership position and a third steering-
committee seat. As it turned out, the
transition drama came from the Demo-
cratic side, where forty-three members
voted against making Nancy Pelosi the
minority leader. Boehner and his Re-
publican leadership team won unani-
mous election.
"When it comes to the issues of
cutting spending, creating jobs, deal-
ing with Obamacare, reforming Con-
gress-this unites all of our members,
including all eighty-five brand-new
ones," Boehner told me as Congress left
Washington for the Thanksgiving re-
cess. "There's no daylight between the
freshmen and any of our members or
the leadership."
But Boehner doesn't imagine that
managing the Tea Party Congress will be
as smooth as the transition has been.
Gaps between the freshmen and the
leadership may well appear when Boeh-
ner and his team decide how to proceed
on health care, and there is already dis-
agreement between Boehner and some of
the newcomers, including at least one
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freshman member of the leadership
team, about how to control the federal
deficit. The matter of raising the govern-
ment's ceiling on the national debt is a
particular concern. Last February, Con-
gress raised the debt limit to $14.2 tril-
lion; the debt is already nearing that
point, and will reach it-fulfilling obliga-
tions that the government has already in-
curred-by the time warm weather ar-
rives. Before then, Congress will have to
decide whether or not to once again raise
the debt limit. (The least of the conse-
quences of doing otherwise would be
havoc in the bond market.)
A similar fight in 1995 led to a
shutdown of the government, and
played disastrously for Newt Gingrich's
Republicans. Clinton's handling of
the situation was masterly, Gingrich's
clumsy. What Republicans considered a
principled stand for fiscal restraint
played as an act of petulance (Gingrich
had publicly complained about having
been forced to sit at the rear of the plane
on a Presidential trip); Clinton's ap-
proval ratings rose as Gingrich's plum-
meted. Boehner and his team will have
to convince Republicans that it really is
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in their best interest to go along with
something they vowed, as candidates, to
oppose. "This is going to be probably
the first really big adult moment" for the
new Republican majority, Boehner told
me. "You can underline 'adult.' And for
people who've never been in politics it's
going to be one of those growing mo-
ments. It's going to be difficult, I'm cer-
tainly well aware of that. But we'll have
to find a way to help educate members
and help people understand the serious
problem that would exist if we didn't
d . "
o It.
B oehner won't take the Speaker's
gavel until January 5th, but his un-
official elevation came in September,
when President Obama, campaigning
to salvage the Democratic majority in
Congress, began to frame the election
as a chance to save the republic from
John Boehner. In a forty-five-minute
speech on the economy on Septem-
ber 8th, Obama called out Boehner,
by name, eight times. The President
seemed almost to be wishing for the gift
that voters had handed Bill Clinton
with the Republican sweep of 1994-a
polarizing opposition figure. Clinton
needed to regain the middle in order
to save his Presidency, and Newt Gin-
grich, from the start of his Speakership,
proved an obliging foil. The '94 results
were barely in when Gingrich made his
first public appearance as presumptive
Speaker, displaying in a morning-after
press conference the qualities that made
his tenure at once so exhilarating and
so exhausting, to ally and foe alike. As-
suming the tone of one addressing a
roomful of particularly dim children,
Gingrich, a former history professor,
lectured the press ("You guys are so
deeply committed to a negative view"),
critiqued the Democratic dilemma ("The
Democrats adopted a McGovemite view
of foreign policy and military power,
Lyndon Johnson's Great Society struc-
ture of the welfare state, and counter-
culture values"), and fixed the Repub-
lican victory in historical perspective
("I think you probably have to go back
to at least 1946 to find an election as de-
cisive"). He declared the new Republi-
can majority a band of "revolutionar-
ies" with a warrant from the American
people. "Every time you've had an elec-
tion that clear-cut, the word that has